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Contenuto archiviato il 2024-06-18

Central European Aeronautical RESearch initiative

Final Report Summary - CEARES (Central European aeronautical research initiative)

The concept of the 'Central European aeronautics research initiative' (CEARES) project (1 April 2008 - 31 March 2010) was to establish a well coordinated network among the research organisations of the Central European states for sharing the know-how, the latest research results and to be able to find the contact more easily with the European aeronautics industry.

The objective was to bring together research centres and universities from the region and give them the possibility to work together. The main tool was the establishment of a regional network, called CEARES network where key aeronautical research centres and relevant university departments were invited. By the project closure the network counted almost 40 organisations and more than 50 experts from 15 countries. The CEARES network members were informed about the capabilities, research activities and research needs of other members through workshops and a project website with an internal, intranet type forum (see http://www.ceares.eu online).

The focus region of the activities was Central Europe, the network members were mainly from the New Member States: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and from Austria, Croatia and Serbia. CEARES was also open to cooperate with organisations from the rest of Europe and experts from these countries form the advisory board and also a significant part of the workshop presenters came from the EU-15. Key players of the European research industry - leading research centres and universities, aircraft and component manufacturers - were also invited to provide examples and to transfer their know-how to CEARES network members.

The key achievements of CEARES can be listed as follows:
1. Enhanced information sharing
All of the three originally planned workshops were partly dedicated to presentations of the network members. The focus was general in Budapest, while Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic were more in spotlight in Zilina, and Romania in Bucharest. An intranet-type forum was also established at the beginning of the project, to which personal login names and passwords were distributed to all of the members.
2. Building the base of a subsequent research network
The consortium recognised that there was a need and will to cooperate in this region, but only the first steps are difficult. Therefore CEARES project assisted in the establishment of a Central European research network. The aim was to build a 'living' network that is a set of bilateral or multilateral research cooperation in different fields. After the project closure the CEARES network continued its existence, independently of the project.
3. Raising common research topics
Cooperation is a must in today's research life. The consortium believes that CEARES contributed to new connections and to common research topics throughout the project duration and believes that these kinds of cooperation will continue also after the project closure.
4. Foster the participation in FP7
CEARES was not intended to be a forum for FP7 proposal preparation, however emphasis was given to FP7 awareness raising during the four workshops. The CEARES project officer from the European Commission presented FP7, but SESAR and CleanSky joint undertakings were also delineated. AeroPortal project was mentioned and presented a few times as well.
5. Contribution to the creation of a European Research Area (ERA)
CEARES surely contributed to the goals of the European Commission to create ERA by fostering cooperation among researchers in aeronautics. CEARES didn't limit cooperations to Central Europe, in fact it increased them on a European scale. The participation of some of the key European research centres, universities and industrial players in the advisory board and at workshops helped to harmonise the local research activities with European ones and consequently enhanced the research cooperation at European level as well.